Truss and her new chancellor must hit the ground running

THERE is about to be a new duo at the top of British politics – not only Liz Truss when she becomes our third female prime minister, but Kwasi Kwarteng when he becomes her chancellor.

- Patrick O’Flynn

Well-placed Whitehall sources say Mr Kwarteng, the son of Ghanaian immigrants who won a scholarship to Eton then achieved a double first at Cambridge, already knows he will be running the Treasury by early September.

While it will of course be Truss who becomes the bigger story and who inherits the all-encompassing media platform associated with being the political leader of the nation, Mr Kwarteng will have a central role in setting out the agenda of the new administration.

His moment will come in the form of an emergency Budget to be delivered by mid-September, the outlines of which he will already be working on in close consultation with her.

Conventional wisdom will have it that they should stick to centre-ground economics and avoid enabling opponents to accuse them of performing “a lurch to the Right”.

BUT conventional political wisdom is often wrong. There is at least as strong a case to be made that the British public fully understands that this year has seen the country overtaken by a series of deep-seated crises that require a drastic response.

Rather than ranking potential new policies by how they poll when initially suggested to voters, Truss and Kwarteng would be far better advised to focus on whether they will work.